Cross-platform graphics API Vulkan is now ‘ray-tracing ready’

The Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan’s SDK, tools, and drivers are now “ray-tracing ready” for developers.

Vulkan is an open-source and interoperable alternative to graphics APIs like DirectX, OpenGL, and Metal. Ray-tracing, meanwhile, is touted as the next big advancement in the visual fidelity of graphics, especially for games.

“4A Games was one of the earliest adopters of hardware-level ray-tracing by developing the first real-time raytraced global...

16 December 2020 | API

Microsoft debuts .NET 5.0 after year and a half in preview

Microsoft has debuted .NET 5.0 a year and a half after it was first unveiled, alongside some other important developer products.

.NET 5 was first unveiled back in May 2019 and promised to be the first with a single runtime and framework which can be used to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, WebAssembly, and more.

Multiple previews have come and gone since .NET 5’s unveiling, but Microsoft took the opportunity to use this week’s .NET Conf 2020...

12 November 2020 | Languages